February 16-22

Who Won? Not These Guys.

By WARREN E. LEARY

Published: February 23, 1997

The debate over whether Admiral Robert E. Peary or Frederick A. Cook was the first to reach the North Pole has been settled after 90 years, according to a book published last week.

Neither of them did, says Robert M. Bryce, an historical researcher who spent 20 years studying the great polar controversy. In his book, ''Cook & Peary: The Polar Controversy, Resolved,'' (Stackpole Books), Mr. Bryce contends that their own records show that both explorers faked their claims to have stood at the northernmost point on the globe.

The expedition papers of both men, some newly uncovered by the author, and accounts by their companions show that the two explorers made genuine attempts to reach the pole by dog sled. But Dr. Cook, who claimed he made it to the pole on April 21, 1908, and Admiral Peary, who said he arrived on April 6, 1909, were short of their goal by perhaps hundreds of miles. Neither admitted failure, Mr. Bryce says, because the stakes were too high.

So the first person to set foot on the North Pole appears to have been Joseph Fletcher, who stepped off a United States Air Force C-47 plane that flew there in 1952. WARREN E. LEARY